Resilience and Self compassion. I really enjoyed listening to Woman’s Hour this morning! What a great way to start the year!

The guests today were four women with very different life stories. Together they explore how to be more resilient or, at the very least, cope more easily with the challenges life brings. Kristin Neff talks about developing the skill of self compassion, along with other guests; one who has a terminal cancer diagnosis and others who have experiences of the prison system. What wonderful human beings. Nequela Whittaker was once a gang leader and at 17 she was imprisoned for four years. In this clip below she talks about resilience and how you can use it to get you through your challenging times.

Therapy can be a great way to develop more resilience and learn how to be self compassionate. You are welcome to contact me to find out more.

Disappointment

Throughout our lives we will all have to deal with disappointments. Disappointment is not an easy thing to face especially as squashed underneath there can be many different feelings; anger, shame, regret, envy or sadness to name but a few.

As we move in to December I’m aware that this time of year can enhance those feelings of disappointment; especially if our expectations of the season, and our expectations of others, doesn’t quite fit with what really takes place over the next few weeks.

When I think of disappointment I think of suffering. If I can acknowledge that suffering, I accept it’s there and I can be compassionate to myself by not being self-critical. Through self-compassion I can then find a way to live with those uncomfortable feelings.

Compassion

Self-compassion isn’t about feeling sorry for yourself; it’s the antidote of that. It’s caring for ourselves in response to suffering, being more kind to ourselves. Paul Gilbert in his book The Compassionate Mind writes that:

“Compassion isn’t about becoming less focused and less able, it’s about becoming refocused and more able.”

As humans we have a deep well of compassion inside each and every one of us. The late neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp discovered that one of the primary emotional circuits in the brains of mammals creates the experience of compassion, warmth and caring. So, with practice, focus and the use of mindfulness we can enhance this part of our brains to generate compassion within ourselves, for ourselves, as well as towards others.

The change blog written by Stephanie Burg has a great article about self-care and self-compassion. She talks frankly about her own life experience. When she was a ballerina she regularly had to over-ride the warning signals her body was sending her, which resulted in significant injuries and eventually led her to leave the profession.

As a Nutrition and Lifestyle Coach she began to work with women from every walk of life and realised that she had a lot to learn from her clients. She found out about the different ways in which they respected and took care of their bodies. Why not take a look?